Quad core i5 at the Pasadena apple store!!

I was at the apple store earlier and over heard a apple guy telling a customer that the 15" Macbook pro 2.4ghz was faster because it's a quadcore. That was just plain nonsense. Not sure what he said the 15" was faster than, but it seems that the apple employees are not informed about the new processors at all. Just wanted to share.

Curiously enough, on the 13th, I was in my local Apple Store shortly after it opened, and had a 'discussion' with the store manager about the incoming MBP's.

He started burbling on about the new line of 'quad core' pros and I stopped him mid spiel and told him about hyperthreading, and the fact that there were absolutely not any (physical) quad core laptops now, or likely any time soon.

He responded with a look of annoyance, told me he just got briefed that morning on the new machines, and that they were indeed 'real quad cores', and that I should read the specs..

I laughed at him, and asked him if I could get a legally binding statement that I could buy a 4 processor laptop from him.. he looked uncomfortable, said no, then clutched at his ear bud and fled with 'gotta take this'..

Seems they kinda skipped over the details a bit in their product briefing yeah..

Haha briefing my ass. Their briefing just some idiot who assumes all i5/i7 are purely quadcores. Just irritates me when they confidently tell lies to customers. Guess that's what makes a good salesperson

Unfortunately many sales people just see is as a job, and even though they might read through the specs of the products they sell, they don't really care, and they definitely don't spend time on forums like these, finding out all the possible details about stuff. So that's why it's always a good thing to come prepared, and already know all the answers to questions you might have

Though the Core i7 2.66GHz MacBook Pro has 4 virtual cores, it's not twice as fast as the Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz MacBook Pro. For example, the Cinebench 11.5 CPU test uses all available cores (real or imagined). The Core i7 MBP was only 29% faster -- not twice or 100% faster. The same was true of Geekbench 2.1.5.

We plan to run some real world tests to confirm this. It's a significant upgrade but not wickedly faster.

Is it an actual Apple store by Apple itself? Or an authorised retailer that sells Apple products?

I know that at least one particular authorised retailer in Singapore (nubox) has been spreading wrong information about what Macs are capable of. I once overheard a conversation where their employees were telling this man that Boot Camp allows you to run Windows AND Mac side by side.

When I asked them about it, they told me that during a briefing they were shown how Windows applications could just be ran at the same time. I told them that had to be virtualization, but they were still convinced it was Boot Camp that achieved this. I suspect that during the briefing they were told about Boot Camp, and then shown a video of virtualization, but they didn't mention that it was virtualization.

I had to go tell the poor man that the employees were telling him the wrong thing, though he was no idiot himself and was wondering how it was possible that it could run Windows natively beside OS X.

ummm you guys know that the guy may have known as well as i do that the new processors are not quad core and he was just telling the customer what they want to hear. guy hears quad core and he says okay the old ones are dual core and the new ones are quad core...that means double the speed right??? you got to think that a lot of these p[eople are not as informed as others and they might just got a lot of money to blow and want a sexy mac...

sorry bout rant/typos if present... you know i think i might put that in my signature.

You can't take virtualization into account to make a quad-core. Hyperthreading makes 4 VIRTUAL CORES. Quad-core means 4 PHYSICAL cores. Virtual cores and physical cores are completely different. Yes you are wrong.

The difference between last gen and current gen is Hyperthreading to make 4 virtual cores. However they are the same in the aspect that they have 2 physical cores, they are both dual-core.

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Read my first post, that's exactly what I said - taken virtualization into account. I know iX isn't physical quad core. But the OP wrote about store guy talking performance, so physical quad core or not, it still acts like one. What you see in the screenshot above is what I was iterating.

Anyways, I don't care much because this thread itself is funny and a waste of time. You don't have any video evidence. I mean I too could just go around saying random stuff without proof and make fishy thread titles that imply something different than its content, doesn't matter.

Am I wrong ? Great ! Let's go and sue Apple. All I need now is your explanation why.

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Seriously? Hyper-Threading is not more true QC computing than Debbie Blow-up Doll can be a real girlfriend. But I suppose you think virtual memory is real memory too and go around telling people your machine has 68GB of RAM.

He started burbling on about the new line of 'quad core' pros and I stopped him mid spiel and told him about hyperthreading, and the fact that there were absolutely not any (physical) quad core laptops now, or likely any time soon.

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There are Nehlam based mobile quad cores (i7-720QM, 820QM and 920QM) that you can get in several PC laptops.

He started burbling on about the new line of 'quad core' pros and I stopped him mid spiel and told him about hyperthreading, and the fact that there were absolutely not any (physical) quad core laptops now, or likely any time soon.

Click to expand...

There are Nehlam based mobile quad cores (i7-720QM, 820QM and 920QM) that you can get in several PC laptops.

Click to expand...

My discussion with the manager was specifically about the new mac books; yes, there are actual quad core laptops, but certainly not MBPs, and definitely not the ones he was gesticulating at!

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